In The Time of Trump, Watch Congress As Well

Surely, we see they are hypocrites who like to pretend superior morality. At times, they will even show of in front of others with a pretense of generosity, giving very little of the their extraordinary means, and using that not-so-charitable giving as an excuse to ignore the demands of justice, saying charity and not the state should be the means by which injustice is rectified. Jesus could very well be speaking to them when he said:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.  You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! (Matt. 23:23-4 RSV).

The sad part is so many of these politicians claim to hold the highest forms of morality while acting contrary to basic expectations of justice also claim to be very orthodox and pious Christians. It is by such claims they dupe Christians to vote for them and put them into office. They will speak and say things which sound right to Christians, while having everyone ignore how they violate the same morality they preach.  While they can fool some people with this rhetoric, non-Christians are not fooled, indeed, they see it as just reason to ignore Christianity: if those who appear to be its most vocal proponents reject the morality they preach, why should anyone follow the teachings of the Christian faith? They make Marx’s criticism of religion look valid; Christianity appears to be an opiate used to keep people trapped in injustice.

Salvian, seeing the destruction of the Roman Empire, with similar cause and reason, laid the blame on the Christian leaders who preached what they did not follow, making the Christian faith ridiculed by the pagans. They were doing greater evil because they knew the moral obligations which they failed to follow through, and they added to their crimes by giving reason for God to be blasphemed by the non-Christians:

As I have said, this evil is peculiar only to Christians, because through them, in a way, is God blasphemed. They learn good and do evil who, it is written, confess God by word and deny Him by deeds. They, as the same Apostle says, repose in the Law and know its intent and approve of those things that are the more profitable. They have the form of knowledge and of truth in the Law. They preach they must not steal, yet they do steal. They read that they must not commit adultery, yet they commit it. The glory in the Law, yet by transgression of the Law they dishonor God. Therefore, for this very reason, Christians are worse because they should be better. They do not practice what they preach, and they struggle against their faith by their morals. [1]

Indeed, because they promote themselves as Christians, and so know the good which each state should follow, they are that much more condemned for their failing to promote justice. Those who do not know the good, those who do not think it is objectively real or understand all its demands, are not as culpable for failing to live up to such standards due to their ignorance, while those who know and use it as a battering ram against true justice stand far more condemned than those who sin in such ignorance: “And by this I understand, as I have said above, that we who have and spurn the Law of God are much more culpable than those who neither have it nor know it at all.”[2]

True justice demands following Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, and using it as the foundation for political concerns. Blessed are the poor and woe to the rich will not leave many seeking power for the sake of money happy, but yet it is key; the poor and oppressed find Jesus as their defender, and those who would take up the name of Christian will follow Christ in setting them free. As we find ourselves in this topsy-turvy world where Trump is going to be president, and Congress is going to look the other way at ethical violations, Christians must now stand together and unite under Christ’s new law, denouncing any and all injustice which comes forth in the new administration. Now is not the time to relax. Now is the time to prove we are Christians and stand with justice, lest we suffer the fate of all nations which allow injustice reign.

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[1] Salvian, “The Governance of God” in Salvian the Presbyter. trans. Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, PhD (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1962), 123.

[2] Ibid., 125.

 

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